


Wasteland

by Merixcil



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Brief suicide ideation, Bruce still wants to bone Gotham City, Gen, M/M, Melancholy, acknowledging the problem without fixing it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-01
Updated: 2018-04-01
Packaged: 2019-04-17 01:38:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,475
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14177763
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merixcil/pseuds/Merixcil
Summary: They're getting older, they're getting tired.They keep going.





	Wasteland

The smell of fresh rubber crowds the rooftop, reminding Bruce of new marigolds dipping into soap suds so thick the crockery is lost beneath their blanket. He can’t remember where the memory is from but he must have been very small, hanging off Alfred's leg while his mother urged him to leave the butler alone.

“It’s his job, Bruce. Don’t disturb him while he’s working.”

The steady grind of bone on bone, muscles straining against forces larger than himself but never insurmountable. This is work, after a fashion. Bruce will not be disturbed, no matter how hard his chosen profession might be at times. He’s come close to snapping three times this week, and its only Tuesday.

Or Friday. Or Sunday. Who knows? What matters is that it’s dark enough for him to hide in pockets of shadow around the city, caves that don’t really exist unless you're stupid enough to think them solid. He saves so many lives by staying just out of shot. People don’t see the Batman coming anymore, they sense him.

“Is that all you’ve got?” Joker singsongs. He’s off key, shoulders slumped forward and his smile not quite fully formed. Bruce can imagine his litany of excuses. _Have you ever had a really bad day?_

Rain hangs as a semi permanent haze in the air, catching the lights of the city below and making little rainbows that you can only see from on high. Gotham looks so different when you climb to its peak and let it spread itself open for your pleasure.

There’s a contraption set up on the other side of the rooftop, Joker holding up a comically large red button to activate it. It’s spring loaded and mostly comprised of pulleys and weighted mechanisms visible through the patchwork wood front. There’s a stamp loaded on the top of it, as big as Bruce’s head, bearing the same design that has marked all the victims of the clown’s latest spree.

Two years ago, Bruce might have cut to the chase, run ahead of his target and raced him to the finish line. But this time round he just couldn’t summon the enthusiasm. He followed the obvious trail of breadcrumbs and spent hours brooding in the cave in a vain attempt to convince Alfred that he was taking this seriously.

It all seems so pointless when he and The Joker wind up back where they started all the same. Sure, people got hurt, even if it was nothing more serious than a few major concussions. But if they hadn’t been the target this time round, the clown would have gotten them next time. At least The Joker has the good graces to keep the game fresh. If Bruce has to run circles around Penguin in another case of mass fraud he’s going to scream.

Bruce lunges towards The Joker’s stamp catapult and the clown comes at him sideways, knocking him to the floor with a cursory giggle. They roll across the rooftop, Bruce’s cape wrapping tight around the two of them till they couldn’t pull apart of they tried.

A hand slips, and its probably The Joker’s but it might as well be Bruce’s. There’s a sharp click as the big red button slides into action, followed by the whirring of gears and the twang of a spring shooting free. The two of them look up in time to see the stamp take off, cutting a perfect art through the air to where Bruce’s face had been thirty seconds previously. Over the edge and out of sight.

They disentangle in silence, The Joker giving up the pretence of a smile as he shucks off the sodden cape and does what he can to scrape filth from his ruffled suit. He gets to his feet then offers his hand to help Bruce up.

There’s nothing so much as an old fashioned shock buzzer lying against his palm, let alone his more lethal contraptions. Their eyes flick to the empty stamp canon, letting the air turn stolid and awkward between them as Bruce bats The Joker’s hand away and finds his feet by himself. “Now what?”

“You got me.” The Joker shrugs. “My whole bit was predicated on you getting hit in the face by a Joker Stamp. My face stamped all over yours. It was gonna be hilarious.” He holds a hand over his face, fingers splayed to cover as much skin as possible, like he wants to pull it off and pass it to Bruce in recompense.

Bruce nods and doesn’t ask why he got a brand new stamp when The Joker’s been lugging the same hunk of rubber around Gotham with him for a week.

“Well, I guess I should get going.” The Joker moves to the edge of the roof and peers down. “Say, you reckon if I jump from here the paps will have enough time to get to the scene before I go full pavement pancake? I want them to get my good side for the morning papers.”

“I’m taking you in.” Bruce tells him, but his heart’s not in it. He pulls The Joker’s hands behind his back and lets the clown slip away almost immediately.

With the freshly cut stamp gone the way of every cigarette butt ever stamped out on a Gotham rooftop, the smell of rubber is replaced by car fumes, sea air and ozone. A recipe Bruce refuses to believe could exist in any other city.

“You don’t wanna take me in.” The Joker hums, matter of fact.

“I do.” Bruce insists. “I want this to be over."

“We’re playing the pronoun game with things now, I see. Always with the this and the that. Gotta keep the readers guessing.”

Bruce doesn’t really know what he’s referring to anymore, only that he’s tired and the world is unchanging and stubborn in his hands. Sooner or later, something has to change.

“Something’s gotta give.” The Joker laughs, his voice so thin it might crack.

Gotham is a string of fairy lights beneath them, and they are just two people who have found a patch of darkness to dress up as a cave where they can’t be touched. The horizon doesn’t exist, except as a point beyond which the lights don’t stretch. There’s nothing more to life than this.

Whatever this is.

Bruce focuses on something he can’t see at a distance he won’t travel. “Where would we go if it did?”

“We could get out of here. Drive a car we can’t afford following a plan we don’t have.”

He got that from a movie, Bruce is sure of it. “There’s no such thing as a car I can’t afford.”

“And there’s no such thing as a plan I haven’t thought of.” The Joker sighs, leaning forward against the lip of the roof. He could fall at any minute. “Just a pipe dream, eh? The American Dream! You can have anything except it all.”

“Whatever it is.”

“Precisely.” The Joker beams at the moon, the only outsider who can ever penetrate the bubble Gotham has built for itself. Two pale faces staring each other down over thousands of miles. Bruce isn’t supposed to notice when the clown sends a hand into his pocket to retrieve a switchblade, but tonight it’s just another trick in the book.

The book is very long, spanning decades and digging into the deepest dark corners of both their minds. There’s nothing in it that can surprise them anymore. No plot twist, no great revelation. The story is still compelling at a distance; up close the characters are going through the motions.

Bruce doesn’t need to think to counter The Joker’s attacks. These are old steps, the dance they used to run through when the clown’s laugh was still fresh and raw on Bruce’s nerves. Something to protest rather than something to come home to. All he has to do his keep up the rhythm, letting the fight run itself into the ground.

The Joker goes down laughing, desperate and strangled. If you can’t laugh, you’ll cry.

Below the lip of the roof, the black of the night envelopes them, rising up to replace sight and sound with feeling. The grip of gauntlets over wrists that would be all too easy to snap.

But Bruce won’t. He leaves The Joker intact for the authorities to deal with at their leisure. He can take his latent anger out on the same five Mafioso that are always guarding the route to Falcone’s, or the mix and match goons that Harley and Ivy are sharing these days. It’s all much the same, and if it gets too dreary, The Joker will be at large once again by the end of next week, willing to make another go of it until they find a way to quit this town for good.

**Author's Note:**

> The film Joker got that line from is Baby Driver. I think I wrote this fic late at night after seeing it for the first time while kinda drunk and dealing with some Big Feels?????? Idk it was a while ago. 
> 
> Comments are love. Come find me on [tumblr](http://jeffersonhairpie.tumblr.com/) and [twitter](https://twitter.com/chadfuture_)


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